


after hours

by emilycmbl



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Anxious Yachi Hitoka, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Hinata Shouyou & Yachi Hitoka Friendship, POV Yachi Hitoka, Yachi Hitoka-centric, but illegal ones, jhgfdsdf i have no idea how to tag this, yachi & hinata try to break into the school and yachi has some Thoughts abt it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilycmbl/pseuds/emilycmbl
Summary: Yachi hadn’t known when she woke up that morning that she would be spending the late hours of the day like…this.Thisbeing hatching a scheme with Hinata to try and break into the school after hours, all so they could retrieve some of his forgotten homework.Yachi was pretty sure they were gonna die.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Yachi Hitoka
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36
Collections: Off The Court zine fics





	after hours

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for the off the court zine! it was the first zine i was a part of, and i had such a fun time working with the prompt :) 
> 
> enjoy!

Yachi Hitoka always wanted to be the type of person who had a schedule. Being able to stick to one would also be ideal, she supposed, though having one at all would generally be the first step. The thought festered in her mind as she stood underneath the shelter of her bus stop, where there was just enough shade to block the rays of the late afternoon sun. Looking on at the bus timetable in all its glossy glory, Hitoka marvelled at the bus company’s punctuality and consistency, traits they continued to maintain even when passengers like her couldn’t. Even on a day like today, at least the bus schedule could handle anything that was thrown at it.

The thing about today was that it only started when Hitoka was making her way to Karasuno — a generally unremarkable start to a day, except that it was five PM on a Saturday and Hinata was bouncing nervously at her side. He had called her not ten minutes ago with his voice drowned in panic, words near incoherent except for the occasional ‘homework,’ ‘fail’ and ‘die,’ all words she could only really pick up on because he took his time crying them. Hitoka had agreed to help with whatever problem he had even before Hinata had asked her (or at least she was pretty sure that’s how the conversation played out — he really did descend into incoherency every time his emotions overwhelmed him, and the static over the phone line didn’t exactly help) and one short bus ride later she met him at the agreed place, Hinata already inching closer in the direction of the school before she had fully stepped off the bus. 

“Thank you so much for this,” Hinata said, already a few steps in front of her. He was wheeling his bike by his side and Hitoka could tell he was itching to jump on it and fly through the streets, but the fact that she was lagging behind already forced him to slow down. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to leave this last minute, I swear!”

“It’s alright,” she told him, “I’m always happy to help.”

He definitely wasn’t wrong about leaving this last minute, though, Hitoka noted — the stores lining the street ahead of them were all starting to pack it in for the day, the shop owners all done with their work and hoping for some well-deserved rest. Really, kids like her and Hinata should be following their lead and winding down around this time, too, but apparently things like the hour of the day never registered in Hinata’s plans. She _knew_ she’d reminded him before what the best times to start homework and assignments were. She also knew that, despite his genuine efforts to improve his grades, it was hard for him to maintain a focused streak for any longer than a week. 

“When’s this homework due?” Hitoka asked.

“Monday,” Hinata said. “I haven’t even started it yet! What if it takes me longer than a day to figure it out? What am I supposed to do?” he cried, quickening his pace.

“Hinata, calm down!” She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m helping you, remember?”

He looked down at her. After taking one long breath, he nodded in thanks. “Right. We can do this. Everything will be okay.”

He was still walking a little quicker, though, so Hitoka doubted how much of a calming effect she actually had. 

“When was—” she started, before doubling back. _When was the homework set?_ sounded more like something her mother would ask her, and it wasn’t exactly a productive question right now. It would only lead to useless guilting over what Hinata _should have_ done, and although there were plenty and plenty of things Hinata _should have_ done (a long list of which were steadily forming in Hitoka’s mind) it didn’t change the fact that he probably did none of them. Hitoka stored away that list for after this was done with, so she could hopefully help Hinata more in the future, and shifted her focus to the _now._ “Where is the homework?”

“In my desk— I think,” he stuttered. He cocked his head to one side and looked upwards as if he was talking more to his memories than Hitoka. “That’s the last place I remember it being?”

“In your—” Hitoka stopped in place. “Wait, what? In your classroom?”

Hinata stopped as well, looking over his shoulder. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” he said.

At once, Hitoka was seized with the intense desire to have her ears actually, properly _connected_ to her brain when people were talking to her. Hinata forgot his homework at school, and he had _told her as much_ when he called her. She was there to help him get it back. From inside the school. On a Saturday evening.

Oh _no._

She had already agreed to going into the school after hours with him to help — without thinking, yes, but she had agreed. Did she really pay so little attention to people when they talked that she’d say ‘yes’ to committing illegal activities?! Or maybe it wasn’t her ears that were the problem, and what she actually needed was a better filing system for her brain — she knew how much Hinata had been freaking out over this, but if she had just put any of her concerns or sympathy panics to the side for _just one second,_ she would have easily been able to backtrack out of an idea this dangerous.

“Yachi?” Hinata’s hand was waving back and forth in front of her. His face had less panic in it now, and there was determination settling somewhere in the depth of his eyes. They were coming up close on the school now — Hitoka’s sure that, in Hinata’s mind, this was just another hurdle he had to overcome to move onto another step: get the homework, figure it out, hand it in, and that was it. Simple as that — what other way was there to go about it?

She blinked, shaking her head. “Oh, sorry. It’s nothing.” Hinata already had the idea firmly planted in his mind. He wasn’t the type to back out now. Maybe this _was_ just a simple task, and she was overthinking it, like she always did. The determination in Hinata’s eyes settled her anxiety ever so slightly — she was doing this to help a friend, and more importantly, they were doing it together. It was all going to be okay in the end, right? “Let’s do this.”

Hinata smiled one of his megawatt smiles. “Thank you, again! And sorry, again! Hopefully it won’t take too long. When’s your curfew? We’ll be done before then, I promise!”

“Oh, don’t worry!” she said. “I actually don’t have a curfew, so…”

Hinata bounced up and down. “Really? That’s so cool!” He gasped, a sudden revelation taking over him. “That means you can do whatever you want and stay out as long as you like!”

While that certainly was true, it really wasn’t as cool as Hinata was making it seem. The only reason Hitoka didn’t have a curfew was because, outside of school, she didn’t ever really leave home in the first place. Her mother never put a curfew in place because Hitoka never exactly gave her a reason to.

“…Right.” 

She kept the fact that school was pretty much the only thing in her life to herself. Hinata seemed impressed enough, anyway — even if this was one of the first times, if not the only time, Hitoka had bothered to test the waters with her mother’s leniency. Maybe this was a chance for her to see the world as she never had before — that is, if she _could_ see with the way the slowly setting sun was doing its best to blind her right now. They were walking up the final hill that led to Karasuno, the school less than a hundred metres away now, and Hitoka had to keep squinting as she walked, all so she could just barely make out the silhouette of the school.

It took her a second before she realised she was so unused to the way the sun was hitting her eyes right now because it had always been behind her. When she walked to Karasuno in the morning, it always warmed her back as it rose. Now it was in her eyes, the rays invading her retinas as she tried to blink their offending light out. She raised a hand to save them from the losing fight, looking at the school in its shadows. She never really liked the way Karasuno looked in the evening.

But here she was, the entrance nearing her rapidly as she realised that she could no longer push aside what she and Hinata were about to do. She hadn’t known when she woke up that morning that she would be spending the late hours of the day like…this. Oh god, they were going to die, weren’t they?

They finally reached their destination, a few metres down the road from where the main school gates normally opened up. Hinata was busy resting his bike next to the chain link fence that separated them from being in the good, holy, non-illegal world where happiness and joy prospered, and the bad, illegal crime land where would-be delinquents like them went to die. Her heart was going to leap out of her throat.

“Hinata…?” she started, her voice low. “Um… Exactly _how_ desperate are you to hand this homework in?”

He didn’t miss a beat as he turned to where she stood behind him. “Extremely.” And with that, he jumped the fence.

“Hinata—! Wait!” Hitoka screamed as quietly as she could, frozen in place. She whipped her head left and right, checking for anybody watching and waiting to catch them right in the act, before placing an unsteady foot in the links of the fence. Against her better judgement, she started climbing. “What are you doing? Hold on!” She could see him in front of her, already having dashed in the direction of the main building. Why was he so fast? She landed with a grunt on the school grounds, sprinting to catch up to him. “Hinata!” After finally catching up to him, she grabbed his arm, pulling him back towards the fence. “Please! We’re gonna get in so much trouble if we get caught!”

With his free hand he grabbed her wrist, pulling her back in place. “I know that!” He breathed quietly for a few seconds, before loosening his grip. Hitoka responded in kind. “I know…!” There was this look Hinata got in his eyes sometimes that Hitoka could see now, something brewing just beneath the surface, that made her inclined to believe him. Or, maybe not believe exactly, but trust. He turned to her fully, so they were properly face to face. “But when I think about how much Ms. Ono will kill me—!” He grabbed both of her hands in his, pulling them together between them. “Yachi! I’m too young to die! I still have so much more volleyball to play!”

Hitoka was still trying, fairly fruitlessly, to pull him back towards safety. Now that both of them had already entered school grounds when they weren’t supposed to, she could no longer get through this night with a completely clean record, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t stop Hinata from going any further. She kept tugging on his hands, whispering, “Shouldn’t we just leave while we still can?”

Hinata, apparently seeing no other choice, dropped to his knees to ground the two of them in place. “Please don’t leave! You’re…” he started mumbling now, turning away from Hitoka, “you were the only one who picked up when I called…” His eyes darted between her and the ground.

Hitoka sighed, letting the tension in her shoulders drop and her head hang. It was hard to say no to someone who was literally begging on their knees, but she wasn’t going to give up trying to get this through his head. It had already gotten to this point. “Hinata…we’ve already trespassed.”

His eyes were big with confusion.

She continued, “We entered property we didn’t have permission to? It’s not school hours right now.”

“Oh?” He stood up, brushing his legs off. “But…I always come here outside of school hours?”

_Seriously?!_ Hitoka could seriously cry right now. This was all getting too much for her. _Hinata_ was too much for her. Just what kind of friendship had she gotten herself into? Did Hinata do this on the regular? How had things even gotten to this point for him? Just what did he get up to behind her back?! “Doing what?”

“Volleyball.”

“Oh.” Right. He said it so simply, and she supposed it would be, to him, anyway. “And…you haven’t gotten in trouble for it?”

He shrugged. “Not yet.”

Hitoka sighed again, trying to process that Hinata was somewhat familiar with all…this. When she looked at him he was blinking blankly at her, waiting patiently for whatever she was going to say next, apparently not worried in the least.

She had to admit, being friends with someone like Hinata, someone whose will seemed as unwavering as steel, could be…a _challenge_ sometimes, but in situations like these, she realised it was probably useful to have at least one of them who wasn’t going to self destruct from their own anxieties. Although, Hinata could sometimes be as bad as her in that regard… She wondered how he could so easily slip into Pure Determination Mode like this, even when his own emotions could sometimes get the best of him. Was it all a matter of only responding to what’s in front of him, nothing behind or after? Living his life with no clear plan like that did put him in this situation to begin with, but at least he was actually _doing_ something about it — he’d have his little freak out, sure, but he would always make the most out of a bad situation. Could Hitoka be like that? 

She knew she’d changed some since joining the volleyball club — heck, she wouldn’t even be considering all this if she hadn’t befriended someone like Hinata — but she still felt like it would be better for her to rely on foreseen, knowable structures in her life than to be pulled by the wind in every which way.

But wasn’t that what she was doing anyway? Hinata had become a significant part of her life, just as the rest of the volleyball club had, and she definitely needed to depend on him now — he was much more calm and collected than she was, and if what he was saying was true, then trespassing like they already had wasn’t such a big deal. She didn’t know if she could be like him. She wouldn’t exactly be in this situation in the first place; she was pretty diligent when it came to homework. She probably didn’t need to learn how to act on the fly like he’s so apparently used to living.

But didn’t she join the volleyball club on the fly?

“Okay… So how do you even plan on getting into the school?”

“Right!” Hinata took her by the arm and led her to a tree right beside the entrance to the main building. “The doors and the ground floor windows are always locked. But sometimes teachers forget to lock the windows on the upper floors. If I climb this tree and get onto this awning, I could check and see if one of those windows is unlocked.”

Hitoka stared at him in disbelief. He looked as though all he’d said was nothing more than passing conversation. “How…” she stuttered, “how do you know all that? How do you know what to do?”

Hinata thought for a moment. “Hm… Well…” He started on climbing up the tree, and even despite the low light he made it look easy. “I kind of? Tried doing this once…or twice…in middle school, and it didn’t really work out?” 

What.

_What!!_

Hinata, what the _hell?!_ He’s done this before? Just as Hitoka was feeling more at ease with him being here, with all his supposed experience in this — he’s _too_ experienced! Since when had she made friends with an _actual_ delinquent? She knew Hinata could be pretty reckless at times, but she hadn’t anticipated _this!_

He had managed to climb on top of the concrete awning by now, and he popped his head over the edge to talk to her. “But that doesn’t matter! I think it could work this time, because I have you!” And with that, he disappeared from her sights.

She didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t much she _could_ say, without risking being too loud. She was lucky she couldn’t see Hinata right now — one more reminder of her current reality would have been the final straw. Everything she could see now was already too much. The sun had dipped down below the mountains — it hadn’t set completely, but the school was in a weird glow of darkness now. She could hear Hinata’s footsteps above her shuffling about in the quiet.

She knew, logically, there was no use in trying to avoid reality. She was in this _now_ and had to deal with it _now._ Hinata was…apparently the type of person to pull stunts like this, even if she hadn’t predicted it, but she was sure there’d be just as many surprises from him down the road. It was just that he kept digging up the groundwork she thought she’d neatly laid out. Any expectations she’d had for this day, any expectations she’d had for _him_ — all filled with holes somehow, the minute she’d turned her back. She saw two ways out of it: she could fortify that groundwork, reinforce what she could control just to ease her worries, or, she could plant some flowers in the new spaces. She had a feeling she knew what Hinata would do — but that got him here.

There was some rustling in the branches above her, and in a short moment he was again by her side. He huffed. “They were all locked.”

Determination even in the face of disappointment, willingness to work out a solution even when it wasn’t guaranteed — at least she knew this side of him, but wouldn’t it have all been better spent a week or two before this? Not just on the homework itself or in classes, but maybe on honing and managing some organisational skills? She wasn’t sure that was the root of the problem, but it wouldn’t hurt to try, would it? 

He had called her for help. Time and time again he’d helped her when she needed it, so the least she could do was be helpful for him too, even if he had a habit of blindsiding her. Right now, she just had to make sure they got out of this alive. After that — maybe she could help brainstorm ideas to put a breaking and entering scheme squarely in Plan Z.

“Hinata…” she started, cringing at the way her voice mingled with the silence, “don’t you think there was some other way to go about this?”

He blinked at her for a few moments, hand coming to rest at his chin. He walked out from underneath the tree, pacing in the open grounds while Hitoka stayed firmly planted next to the trunk. 

“Oh!” he gasped. “You’re right!” Before she could get a word in, he had once again taken her arm and led her further into the school grounds. “Here!”

They were right beside the second gym, where Hinata usually spent his time perfecting his jumps and spikes — for a second Hitoka was convinced he had gotten seriously sidetracked and was about to ask her to toss him a ball or two (or a hundred). But he pointed to the building across from it: an offshoot from the main school building, connected to the gym by a short footpath and a metal shelter. She followed the direction of his finger, and right above the shelter was a short but long window, slightly angled from the rest of the wall.

Wait— slightly _angled._

It’s _open._

Hinata grabbed her arm and jumped up and down. “I _thought_ I remembered it being like that! Come on, let’s go!”

“Wait!” She pulled back against his near unstoppable force.

“What?” he said, nearly tripping. “You’re not coming? We don’t have to climb as much here, and we’ll definitely fit through that wind—”

“That’s not it!” She bit her lip, hoping she hadn’t been too loud. “Hinata, I don’t think this is…” 

She sighed.

Hitoka mentally kicked herself for not knowing the proper words to put all her thoughts into, especially since this had been rattling about in her head all evening. It was beyond time she said something, anyway. And maybe she would have said something, too, something all profound and eloquent, if, right in that moment, her phone hadn’t gone off.

The vibration of it in her pocket scared her more than anything, even more than the blaring ringtone decimating the silence of the night. Both she and Hinata jumped at the sudden intrusion and she could feel her heartbeat rocket to an unfathomable tempo in less than a second. Quickly, she yanked it out into the open, the device feeling like hot coal in her hand. This was it. They got found out. They were gonna die.

The longer the phone rang the longer it would keep making noise, and the closer the two of them would inch towards death (either from comeuppance or from anxiety overload — whichever came first). She couldn’t see what else to do. She flipped open her phone and pressed it to her ear.

“Hi—! Hello!” she squeaked.

“Hello? Hitoka?”

She closed her eyes. It felt like a vice grip was released from around Hitoka’s heart — it was her mother’s voice coming through. 

Her heartbeat was still running wild, and her phone’s ringtone was still echoing through her ears, but at least it was a voice she knew and trusted. She let out a long sigh.

“Honey?” her mother said when she didn’t respond.

“Yes! Hi, sorry. I was distracted.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as shaky as her heart felt. It always seemed like her mother could pick up on that kind of stuff. She gave a thumbs up to Hinata who in turn let out a sigh with his whole body.

“Right. Well, I was just wondering where you were, and what time you were going to come home. You said you’d be back before dark, didn’t you? The sun’s almost completely set now.”

Hitoka’s eyes widened. Not just because she had no idea what to say. Not just because she had never been good at lying, _especially_ to her mother, and that’s what she was going to have to do right now. But something about her thumbs up to Hinata had apparently signaled a go-ahead, and he was currently climbing _on top of the metal roof._

She frantically signaled for him to be quiet in every way she could think of.

“Hitoka?”

“Right! Yes! Um…”

So what now? There was so much riding on her next words to her mother, not just for herself, but for Hinata, too. It was these moments; maybe she could have planned for this, maybe she couldn’t have, but the truth was, someone like her was just going to keep agonising over what she could or couldn’t do, never actually dealing with what had to be dealt with until it was at her front doorstep.

She’d never been good at lying — she wasn’t going to be. She would deal with this. She could be creative with her truths, right?

“I’m…staying over at Hinata’s tonight!” Hitoka told her.

Told.

_Told._ She didn’t even ask! Her heartbeat never saw a chance of slowing down. She screwed her mouth shut.

“Oh!” was all her mother said. Forget testing the waters, Hitoka had never rocked the boat like this before. Every second her mother stayed silent added to the fear that she had capsized entirely. She could only hear the grainy static of silence and Hinata moving on the metal. “You’re… So, you’re staying over at a _boy’s_ house?”

Hitoka couldn’t see it, but she knew there was blood rushing to her face, dying the skin there a deep, deep tomato red. She wanted to tell her mother that it wasn’t like _that_ but that meant she’d have to acknowledge there was a _that_ for it to be like and she didn’t even want to think about _that_ — so all she said instead was: “…Yep!”

“Oh!” her mother said again. “Okay…I guess we can talk tomorrow, then.” Hitoka wanted to die. “You know,” her mother continued, as if to herself, “Hinata always did seem like such a nice boy.” 

Although Hitoka would agree with the sentiment, it was hard to conjure up a response when all she could see right now was Hinata squeezing his way feet first through a school window. “Um! Yes! Right! I’ll talk to you tomorrow then! Sorry, I have to go now, bye!” 

She closed her phone without even waiting for her mother’s response and pocketed it as quickly as she could. She dashed over towards Hinata and climbed her way up a bit of the scaffolding so she wouldn’t have to shout at him.

“Hinata!” she whispered. “Are you really going through with this?!”

“Oh, hey!” he said. “I don’t think it can actually open further than this,” he gestured to the window, the opening of which he could only fit into up to his knees, “so we’d have to break it if we wanted to get in.”

“We’re not breaking any windows!”

“What?” Hinata blinked. “Of course not.”

Hitoka sighed, making her way to stand back on solid ground. “Just…please, come down.”

A few grunts of effort later and he was once again by her side. Hitoka’s heartbeat was still frantic from the phone call, and she wasn’t sure if she could string together any words coherently with her current mindstate — but she was doing it now or never. “We have no idea what we’re doing here, Hinata.”

“Yeah!” he protested. “We’re getting my homework.”

She shook her head. “Hinata, I’m sorry,” and she meant it, “but if you’re at this point in trying to get it, I think it was always a lost cause.”

“Nothing’s a lost—!” he cut himself off, then huffed. “I mean…I still have time. It’s only Saturday.”

Hitoka looked up at him. His eyes were searching hers, like his own words weren’t enough to convince himself. 

This really was a last ditch attempt. 

Hitoka’s gaze fell on the window he was just trying to climb into. “Hinata…I think the fact that you have this drive is pretty commendable…or, uh, praiseworthy…but I feel like there are ways it could be…used…better…? Like, your first impulse isn’t always your best decision. And, sometimes a solution is just working out what is… Does this make sense?”

“Um. Yes?”

Okay, so that was a no. Maybe she needed a different approach. “What I’m saying is—” actually, what _was_ she saying? Anything intelligible would suffice— “I know you want to be productive, and you’re bouncing back better than I would in your situation. But sometimes when we try to be productive we accidentally end up…wasting more time than we had in the first place? Uh, and it just means that while we figure out _how_ to be productive, we have to be comfortable with a certain number of sacrifices,” she reasoned. She had certainly sacrificed something on the phone call with her mother — but she _had_ bought them more time. “But in the grand scheme of things I’m not sure those sacrifices matter!”

Hinata winced, turning away from Hitoka to look back at the window. She knew he thought getting the homework back was his last and only chance, but there was a bigger picture that he needed to see.

“Think of it like! This is a lost match, okay?” She _hoped_ this would work. “Forgetting the homework at school lost you the match.”

“It—what?” He cocked his head to the side. “Then I’ve lost a lot of matches.”

“Right! And! Losing is never completely avoidable, right? So what do you do to stop losing?”

“Train to get better.”

“Exactly! Um, so, all I’m trying to say is…you can’t change the fact that you _lost,_ but right now the best use of your time would be to figure out ways for it to not happen again…hopefully ever.”

Hinata’s brows furrowed. “So…I should be studying harder instead?”

“Not just that. It’s also your organisational skills,” she said, keeping her eyes on the ground. “Your sense of timing is kinda…”

Hinata hummed, his face all screwed up in thought. “I _think_ I get it…”

“Also we really, really _don’t_ know what we’re doing here,” Hitoka continued. “There’s no way we’ll be able to break in. I’m not really sure why you thought I could help.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Hinata said. She looked at him. “You’re smart.”

Again, so simple.

Hitoka let herself smile a little. “Well, if you’ll allow me to take advantage of that smartness, can I ask you to trust me that…” She sighed. “I think we should cut our losses here?”

Hinata did nothing but stare back at Hitoka for a few moments. His eyes all but bored into hers — did she say something wrong? She filtered back through her words — was it an unreasonable request? Or did she think she said one thing when actually her mouth said something entirely different, completely rude and out of line? Had she just been babbling nonsense _all night?_

“Yeah,” Hinata said, bringing Hitoka back to reality. He nodded. “I trust you.”

She blinked. “You do?”

He nodded again.

Hitoka couldn’t stop the smile spreading across her face as she jumped to close the gap between them, wrapping her arms around Hinata in a crushing hug. Maybe they _weren’t_ going to die tonight. “Thank you,” she sighed.

They ran as fast as they could back to the school fence, jumping back over right next to where Hinata’s bike was, and Hitoka exhaled in relief once her feet were steady on safe ground. Her breath danced and dissipated in the cold night air. She looked back and forth, checking there still wasn’t anyone about to catch them, before turning to Hinata. The sun had well and truly set now, with the stars just beginning to flicker on in the sky, but it wasn’t any harder to see him in the darkness.

“Well,” she started, “I guess I’ll see you on Monday, then. I hope it’s not too bad for you.”

“What?” Hinata said, kicking the bike stand up. “Didn’t you say you were spending the night?”

Oh. 

She _had_ said that, hadn’t she? She didn’t realise Hinata was listening. 

“…Are you sure?”

“Yeah!” He was all grins now, despite having to abandon his homework. Hitoka still had no idea how he did it. “You should totally come over, you’ll love it! My mom makes the _best_ breakfast food.”

Well, it was hard saying no when living up to her words meant she didn’t _technically_ lie to her mother.

It was a cold thirty minutes back to Hinata’s house, his bike taking them through routes she had never even seen before, but it was all worth it for how the warmth of his house hugged her on arrival. She hadn’t woken up that morning knowing she’d wouldn’t be going to sleep in the same bed, but what did it matter? She spent the night staying up later than she should’ve, brainstorming with Hinata every memory improvement technique they could think up, mapping out schedules and drafting checklists for their daily activities, making promises that they’d be sure to check in on each other as much as they could. 

They didn’t really know if they would end up following these schedules — neither of them voiced the uncertainty out loud, but it hung in the air between them — but it never lessened the idea that they could be closer to the type of people who would.


End file.
